The refinery we were at provided these box lunches everyday. I tried to remember to take a picture of each one, but most days I finished eating the food before I could remember to take a picture, heh.

The operator we worked with didn't think it was that great though, the conversation usually went something like:

Us: Lunch was really good today! What do you think?

Operator: Sigh, it was only OK.

We also tried a few smaller places around town. Our driver took us to a small noodle joint and our process engineer took us to a noodle shop near the refinery. I didn't manage to get a picture of the food at the restaurant our process engineer to us to since I ate it too fast D: BUT Drew pinned it on Google Maps for any advisors that might come through after us (I think the translation of the name of the place is Glass Bowl Noodles?).

There was a place that was near the hotel that was recommended to us that we try before we leave. We were told we would recognize it by a large gold bull statue in the store front. The restaurant would be on the 3rd or 4th floor.

We ended up finding it and then quickly realizing that it was supposed to be a dinner place for bigger parties. So Drew and I ended up being seated at a huge 8 person table. On the plus side, the food was pretty good and they had a picture menu.

The restaurant also had a small shot sized bottle of goji berry vinegar. Complimentary. It was oookay I guess. Wouldn't order the full size for myself. It's apparently supposed to be good for health? Digestion? Alcohol consumption? I don't really know.

We ordered a variety of food, argued over if we ordered a pigeon or not (we did). Drew wasn't convinced it was a pigeon at first, but after asking around the refinery, turns out, I was right.

The staff was pretty concerned that we only wanted one pigeon (people must order like 2-3). We ordered mutton with the nice vinegar dipping sauce (not the same as the goji berry vinegar), a sea cucumber soup (neither of us had tried sea cucumber at the time), some meat buns, and donkey.

Personally, I really like lamb/mutton. Donkey was pretty good too, but I feel kind of guilty eating that. There’s a saying in China apparently that goes kind of like "In heaven there's dragons meat, on earth, there is donkey meat"

I did not care for the sea cucumber soup. Not one bit. I can't get over the texture. And I made the mistake of biting into it and looking at its insides. Horrible. It's considered to be very high in nutrition but I just don't like it.

Pictures of some food items are below, sorry it took so long for me to gather everything together!

until next time,

SC

food in yinchuan